Substitute Darren Bent grabbed a late equalizer for Aston Villa in a 1-1 draw with midlands rivals West Bromwich Albion on Sunday, denying the in-form visitors a victory that would have lifted them to third place in the Premier League.
The England striker lashed in a left-foot shot from close range in the 80th minute, making a statement to new manager Paul Lambert after being stripped of the captain’s armband and then dropped to the bench following a barren start to the campaign.
“It’s obviously been a difficult couple of weeks, losing the captaincy first off, then finding out I wasn’t playing today, but I managed to score the goal to get a point,” Bent said.
Photo: Reuters
Shane Long put the visitors ahead in the 51st minute when he showed quick reactions to guide home a low finish after Villa defender Ron Vlaar’s attempted clearance flew straight at the Republic of Ireland international.
While sixth-place West Brom have now made their best start to a top-flight season in 34 years, Villa stayed 15th, having won just one of their first six games under Lambert since he joined from Norwich City in the close-season.
However, Villa bossed possession for long spells of a match that only sprung into life after Long’s goal, his fourth in all competitions this season.
“The response of the players to falling behind was excellent — I cannot ask for any more,” Lambert said. “Everybody is in it together, we need every player to perform.”
Substitute Romelu Lukaku, on loan from Chelsea, nearly won all three points for West Brom when his deflected shot brushed against the post with stoppage-time approaching, but that would have been unfair on Villa, who also went close through Christian Benteke and Joe Bennett after the break.
In the end, they needed record signing Bent to get them out of trouble and he could not have picked a better time to show his eye for goal, with England manager Roy Hodgson in the stands.
Bent has been ignored in recent months by Hodgson and is no longer a regular with his club either following the summer signing of Benteke from Belgian side KRC Genk, but he showed he is one of the country’s most lethal strikers by taking just 11 minutes to make his mark after coming on, lurking at the back post after a bit of pinball in the area following a corner to steer home a predatory finish.
It was only the fifth goal West Brom have conceded in six games under Steve Clarke, who is defying the critics who said he would struggle to make the step up to manager after 12 years as an assistant coach at Chelsea, West Ham United and Liverpool.
“Having been 1-0 in front and with decent control of the game for long parts, we are a bit disappointed not to win, but then again, if you said before that we would come away from a difficult away game with a point, then we would have taken that,” Clarke said.
In a nice touch by Villa fans, a minute’s applause was dedicated to club captain Stiliyan Petrov in the 19th minute — the number of his jersey — with the Bulgarian still out of action after being diagnosed with leukemia in March.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier